Lab-produced meat will transform the world for the better. What are we waiting for?

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Meat-hunger is a physical as well as a cultural phenomenonCredit:
Emli Bendixen

Suppose we could create meat without exploiting other species​?

Here’s a challenge. The next time you eat meat, try to think about what happens in an abattoir. I’m not asking you actually to visit one before you tuck in – most of us are well past the point where we could do that. I’m simply asking you to conjure in your mind the animal that made your burger: prematurely separated from its mother, castrated, its horns cauterised, fattened up, led to the slaughter.

We generally don’t think of these things when we lift a delicious bun-encased pattie of beef to our lips, any more than, when we listen to the opening chords of Beethoven’s Fifth, we contemplate the creatures whose guts made the violin...